Digital Extra

  3/29/99
Women's Center of Rhode Island celebrates 25 years of service
An annual gathering in honor of Women's History Month marks the anniversary of the state's first shelter for women and children.

By NEIL DOWNING
Journal Staff Writer

Exorcising the demons of dampness, wind and raindrops outside, a group gathered in a downtown auditorium yesterday to celebrate an eternal source of warmth, brightness and life: women.

About 65 people, most of them women, gathered at the University of Rhode Island Feinstein College of Continuing Education to commemorate Women's History Month with storytelling, music and song.

"It's billed as women celebrating women," said Pamela J. Steager, the master of ceremonies for the event who is also a columnist for the Providence Phoenix newspaper.

Although it was the third such annual gathering, this one offered an extra dimension: it marked the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Women's Center of Rhode Island, an organization in Providence that was launched as Rhode Island's first shelter for women and children.

Proceeds from yesterday's two-hour event will be used to help bolster the center's "hands-up" program. This program is a source of money to buy schoolbooks, household goods and other items for the center's residents and former residents, to help smooth their transition "back to their lives," said Kathy Jellison, executive director of the Women's Center.

Among other things, the center offers temporary shelter for women who are homeless and/or victims of domestic violence, Jellison said.

The idea for donating the proceeds from the festival came from Anne Caldarella, assistant director of student services at the URI Providence campus, Jellison said. "It was a very generous act on her part," she said.

Caldarella said of the center's staff, "They do some wonderful work." Besides offering shelter, the center also works with professionals in health care, law enforcement, probation, welfare and other areas to help recognize and curb domestic violence.

The center has expanded since its founding in 1974 to include child care, employment counseling and other transitional services. Today, the center has a staff of 37 professionals, as well as 150 volunteers.

In a statement Jellison said, "For as many women who come in (to the center), there are 15 to 20 to 100 women for whom shelter would not be an option, who really need to find support services in the community. We probably haven't begun to scratch the surface of what needs to be done out there."

Yesterday's event, " Women's Spirit, Women's Voices in Story and Song," included the reading of a poem written by the well-known poet, Maya Angelou; stories with a focus on women presented by various female storytellers; and a performance by the Rhode Island Feminist Chorus.